Urio

Wednesday, April 7

Yesterday afternoon, Sarah Kiko was supposed to come over and help me with language learning.  A little before 2 o'clock, her sister Grace came over to tell me Sarah was sick.  Too much chicken at the fundraiser!  Grace and I sat and storied for over an hour, and it was really good to get to know her a little bit better. 

 

After Grace left, I went down to Eileen's where several women were gathered and work on a vocabulary word list for a couple of hours.  Thankfully, the kids had finished school early, and I had planned leftovers for supper, so I had plenty of time to work on language learning!  I learned that fog (which they call "snow" in Pijin) is afu, a big man or chief is kuraem (but a big stone can be this, too), and to move too slowly is rikai.  So if I tell you, "Ngatulav rikai kini feo la leiv," you know that my children are slow to come up (since we live at the top of a hill).  I still can't pull any of this from my brain alone, my notebooks are my best friends right now!

 

This morning at market, one of the ladies brought several coconut crabs (urio).  I bought three, determined to learn how they eat the innards!  I've been told for months how sweet rice is when you squeeze urio innards on top, and today was the day to find out.  I asked Barret, our housegirl for the week, to show me how she prepares the delicacy.  It was really easy.  After I boiled the crabs, she just tore a little hole in the abdomen, extracted the intestines, and squeezed the rest over the rice.  We even got to sample urio eggs because one of the urio was a female.  The mixture just tasted like urio, but it was a little hard to get it down because I knew what I was eating.  We made plenty to share as a "thank you" for the men and boys digging holes through the coral to sink the posts for the rain tank.